


All These Broken Pieces

by TheRedGlass



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Character Death Fix, Clint Barton & Kate Bishop Friendship, F/M, Fix-It, Multi, blatant Barton family erasure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-30 21:33:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20103943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheRedGlass/pseuds/TheRedGlass
Summary: Clint can't cope with Natasha's death and is quite willing to let himself fade out of existence. Bucky's not much better, but two broken pieces are stronger than one.





	All These Broken Pieces

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Huntress79](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Huntress79/gifts).

> My first entry for a fic signup/request/challenge so I want to apologize preemptively if I messed something up. (Besides being late. Definitely read BST as EST and then had technical difficulties) I've been in kind of a creative slump lately so this isn't nearly as long as I wanted it to be. I hope the emotion at least came through - that was the main thing for me here. Thank you for a challenging prompt, and I hope you like it.

She's gone.

It always hit him as soon as he opened his eyes in the morning. There was a split second where everything seemed right, and as it should be, a fraction of a moment before his sleeping mind shifted into true wakefulness. But his traitor brain always told him the truth.

She's gone.

Even before he rolled over in the bed and his arm bumped nothing but empty space, something in the very air was wrong and immediately afterwards the realization would dawn on him like a stone fist to the gut.

Gone.

He would close his eyes, hoping every time that maybe this time, he could somehow slip back into the unknowing, as if sheer willpower could bend reality. 

It never worked.

He had lost track of the time since they had managed to bring back the disappeared. Days? Weeks? It all bled together. He hadn't spoken to anyone since the dual funeral. They kept reaching out, or at least trying to. He had taken out his hearing aids and disconnected his wifi and let his phone die. 

He left his bed to let the dog out and then went right back. His whole existence had shrunk to a queen mattress with rumpled sheets.

~

BANG!

Clint weakly raised his head from the mattress, trying to discern the source of the noise, almost concerned for his safety.

Almost.

He sank back onto the pillow after a moment, letting his weary eyes fall shut. He didn't have the energy to fight someone off anyway. Maybe Lucky had knocked something off the counter. “Bad dog,” he muttered.

And then someone poked him.

He flinched in surprise, opening his eyes, hands up weakly in an attempt to defend himself, and was startled to see Bucky standing there.

Bucky made careful eye contact and spoke slowly, allowing Clint time to read his lips. “I'm going to get you some water. And you're going to drink it.”

“...okay?” Clint replied, too startled to even think of objecting.

“And then we're going to talk.”

~

He managed half the water, and even that was no victory because moments later Bucky tried to say Natasha's name and the tears started again. He'd thought he was beyond the crying, that he had settled into a numbness and that he would stay cocooned in that lack of feeling until he faded away like the dust of the snap. 

“Clint-” Bucky started.

“Don't.” He struggled to pull a deep breath. “Just...don't. I don't want to hear any speeches about sacrifice. I don't want to hear about bravery or honor or any of that bullshit.” He'd been sitting up to drink the water, and now he collapsed back to the bed, turning his back to Bucky. His grief was warring with an anger that he thought had left him. But now the embers stirred again. If he had to hear one more word about how noble it was that Natasha had saved them, had traded herself for the whole of the universe-

He felt the mattress dip suddenly and the motion was so reminiscent of Nat that he suddenly couldn't breathe and his chest seized in pain. He was about to roll over, to yell that he didn't need to be fussed over...but then suddenly there was the soft weight of a head against his shoulder and the knot in his chest seemed to ease. “I can't do it either,” came Bucky's voice, just more than a murmur. 

Clint opened his eyes slowly, taking in the man next to him. This close, he could make out the lines on his face. He had been hiding it better, but Bucky was hurting too.

“We gotta get her back.”

He couldn't breathe for a long moment. Until that moment, he hadn't realized how much he needed someone else to say what he had been thinking but too afraid to voice out loud.

“It took her five years to figure out how to undo the snap,” Clint finally mumbled, a tear forming suddenly in his eye as he re-processed the herculean effort she'd made to set the world right. “And I don't think we get to get lucky twice...”

Five years was a lifetime. His stomach turned every time he remembered. Five years where he had left Natasha alone trying to pick up the pieces of the whole damn world. He had never meant to hurt her, never meant to abandon his team, his family.

But when the snap happened and he couldn't get a hold of Kate, he'd damn near lost his mind.

He'd never intended to become anything like a parent, but he'd found the girl when she was thirteen, in over her head during a nanotech alien attack in upstate New York, and it was impossible not to get involved when her weapon of choice was a bow. He didn't see a lot of people trying to make a bow work for them in the 21st century and he respected the hell out of her for it. And, as it turned out, they had a lot in common in their less than stellar upbringings. He'd become her mentor and confidant and he'd gladly put up with Natasha's gentle teasing about the whole situation, all those years she would ask him what he was doing for Father's Day, and if she needed to file adoption papers, and – when Bucky became a part of their relationship – if she needed to buy another World's Best Dad mug. Theirs was a strange sort of family, but it was theirs and it worked.

And then the snap.

He'd tried to find Kate, following a trail of thin clues, hoping desperately that she was one of the few simply lost in the chaos.

At some point on the journey – and he could never pinpoint when, it was all a hot, blinding blur – he saw the other girl. The one who looked like Kate. Beaten and left to the elements. And something snapped inside him. 

It took him less than twenty four hours to track down her attackers and to end them. It was like his brain was on fire. Half the universe's population gone and someone still took another life for granted. And after the first one, it was impossible to stop. He could almost feel his old self hovering somewhere outside his body, begging him not to, to go back to Natasha and what was left of the Avengers and try to fix this. 

But it was too late. He was contaminated, a killer, beyond redeeming.

At least that's what the screaming in his head had said. Because when Natasha finally found him, she said something very different.

Come home. There's hope.

She'd tried to take his hand and he'd tried to pull away but the next thing he knew she had her arms wrapped around him and they were both crying. She'd kissed him, wiped the tears from his face with the soft pads of her thumbs. “I can't lose you too,” she'd whispered.

And now Bucky was wiping a tear from Clint's face in much the same way.

“I refuse to let her go,” he said, a kind of venom hiding in his words. “What about you?”

That was the day Clint began to feel human again.

~

The amount of research they delved into, looking at anything and everything that had the slightest relevance to the problem at hand, physically pained him, in headaches from grappling with logic problems, and being bent over stacks of books. Bucky continuously browsed the internet, stopping only for coffee or to share a new theory with Clint. He wasn't sure if either of them actually slept. 

In the end, it was a combination of late night Star Trek reruns, a conspiracy theory message board, and some experimental tech from Tony's workshop that gave them their fighting chance. The one outside contact they had made in their quest was to interrogate Steve as to exactly what happened when he'd gone to return the stone. The apparition had not been there, he'd told them, voice quivering from old age, anger, and grief. He'd placed the stone on the ground, called out, tried everything to make that place acknowledge him, to return one of his best friends. But nothing. He'd finally chucked the stone over the cliff in a rage, screaming at the injustice of it all. There had been a small flash of light when the stone hit the ground far below, but that was all. And Steve had been forced to return empty handed. 

And now Bucky and Clint were going back. 

~ 

Vormir was even colder than he had remembered, Clint thought, as he and Bucky materialized on the cliff and began setting up the transponders they had created. Neither of them were particularly technologically inclined and working in Tony's old workshop had felt like the worst kind of sacrilege. The devices were ugly and bulky and they could only hope that they would work the way they'd been designed. On Earth, there had been no way to test it, and they had been too afraid to share any part of their plan with anyone but Steve.

The stone held the matter and energy of its sacrifices, they concluded, as it seemed the only way the forces governing the planet could be sure that the sacrifice had been made. Clint's heart squeezed hard in his chest as he flashed back over and over again to the moment he'd pulled the orange stone from the water. Natasha's very soul had been in his hands. 

Bucky nudged him gently back to the present, adjusting a setting on the device. “Keep an eye out for that creepy floating dude, huh?”

Clint shook his head. “I think he thinks his work is done here.” But he felt less confident than he sounded. And he didn't know how he would react if he saw him again. Just thinking about it sent a shock like a raw wound through his guts.

They worked a few minutes in silence before they reached the moment of truth. There was nothing for it but to flip the switch. In theory, it would create a localized time anomaly and send the stone backwards while it also went a matter/energy conversion – forcing it to give up what it held.

“You ready?” Clint asked, swallowing back the tremor in his voice. 

Bucky rested a hand on his shoulder. 

Clint flipped the switch.

A blinding glow of amber light shot up from below the cliff, illuminating the place like a sunrise and then continued to spread, to brighten. It was like watching old footage of the first nuclear tests and Clint suddenly could barely breathe. He shut his eyes against the harsh glow, eye burning, and reached out to find Bucky but the air had become too heavy. Suddenly he was scared that not only was it not working, but that they had just undone Natasha's sacrifice in the worst way imaginable, that the universe was being torn apart beyond them as the light rushed out and engulfed all it touched, that the clock was running backwards and people were disappearing again-

And as suddenly as the light had started, it stopped. Clint opened his eyes slowly, and saw that he and Bucky were no longer standing on the cliff top, but in shallow water that stretched to the horizon. Something had happened. They looked at one another, unspoken fear clear in their eyes. For a moment, nothing. And then, the soft sound of something breaking the surface of water. They quickly turned to find the source of the sound and a dozen yards away, a woman's figure floated face up in the water, red hair pooling around her like a jellyfish. He wasn't sure who shouted first, but they both started to run in the same instant. The short distance seemed impossible and fear squeezed his chest until he saw a flutter of eyelashes and a flash of green. Her eyes were open. She was alive.

And in her hair were tiny shards of amber glass.


End file.
